Roger Sabin traces the history of adult comics back to the political cartoons published in broadsheets since the 19th century.[1] In 1930's, there were clandestinely produced tijuana bibles – rectangular, eight page pamphlets with black printing on cheap white paper. The artwork ranged from excellent to utterly crude and was sometimes also racist (Blacks were caricatured with huge lips and extruding eyes). Their stories were explicit sexual escapades usually featuring well known cartoon characters, political figures or movie stars (used without permission).

Sold under the counter in places like tobacco stores and burlesque houses, millions of the tijuana bibles were sold at the height of their popularity in the 1930s. They went into a steep decline after World War II and by the mid-1950s only a small trickle of new product was still appearing on the market, mainly in the form of cheaply printed, poorly drawn and tasteless little eight pagers which sold for 10 cents each in run down candy stores, gas stations, and schoolyards, circulating mainly among delinquent teenagers.

Starting in 1932, Norman Pett drew a strip called Jane for the British Daily Mirror newspaper. The heroine would often find herself in awkward situations where she would lose her clothing for one reason or another. The strip was written to some extent for a military audience to boost the morale of troops away from home. Winston Churchill said that Jane was Britain's "secret weapon".[2] In the United States, Milton Caniff started producing the strip Male Call in 1943, and Bill Ward came out with Torchy in 1944 about similar risque heroines.

In the 1950s Irving Klaw published a line of underground fetish and bondage comics by artists like Eric Stanton, John Willie, and Gene Bilbrew. These never achieved widespread popularity but were kept in print for many years, sold through Klaw's mail order catalog to the same customers who bought his bondage photographs of Bettie Page. Not quite obscene enough to warrant prosecution, they skirted the limits of legality by avoiding full frontal nudity in their depictions.

Around this time, a psychologist Dr. Fredric Wertham came out with a book Seduction of the Innocent that claimed that the rise in juvenile delinquency being reported in the news at the time was fueled by comic books. He claimed that Batman and Robin were encouraging homosexuality, and decried the bondage seen in Wonder Women's book. EC came under criticism for the graphic violence and gore seen in its crime and horror books. William Gaines was called before a Senate committee to testify, but he remained defensive saying that he was already censoring the more extreme things from his books. Partly in order to avoid the government imposing a solution, the other major publishers banded together to form the Comics Code Authority which would screen comics before they went to press, and only allow the Code mark to appear if the comic passed their standards.

The Code was alarmingly strict. It barred publishers from using the words 'crime,' 'horror' or 'terror' in their titles, thus forcing EC to abandon some of their most popular titles. Police officers could not be portrayed in a negative light, and if a villain committed murder, he would have to be caught and punished by the end of the story. No mention was allowed of vampires, werewolves or zombies, another swipe at EC. Years later when Marvel introduced zombies into their books, they had to call them 'zuvembies' in order to pass the Code. In general, DC and Marvel were supportive of the Code, but EC struggled to cope with the new rules, and eventually abandoned most of their titles to focus on Mad Magazine, which did not need Code approval.

From 1965, Warren Publishing started publishing two black and white magazines, Creepy and Eerie, commissioning work from the artists who had worked on EC's horror line. Warren added Vampirella in 1969, and then the science fiction magazine titled 1984 (later 1994) starting in the year 1978. The large format of these titles meant that they could be sold with other magazines aimed at adults rather than displayed in comic racks where the child-oriented titles were found.

In 1978, the Belgian company Casterman started putting out the magazine À Suivre attracting submissions by many of the same contributors who were seen in Metal Hurlant. Catalan Communications and more recently NBM Publishing have also published adult works from Europe mostly as standalone graphic novels, although NBM now has an anthology magazine called Sizzle.

In 1977, the British anthology 2000 A.D. first appeared, and featured the work of many writers and artists who were to become influential in the adult comics field in the U.S. later, notably Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons who created Watchmen and Neil Gaiman who went on to work on The Sandman. Another popular British magazine is Viz which parodies earlier British comics anthologies with an injection of incongruous sex or violence. While 2000 A.D. is adventure-oriented, and Viz focused on potty humor, Raymond Briggs tried to give British comics a more serious tone with works such as When the Wind Blows about an older couple trying to come to terms with the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

In 1983, Warren went bankrupt, but more recently, Dark Horse Comics has been reprinting some of Warren's old stories, and has revived the Creepy and Eerie magazines.

The publisher of Marvel Comics in the 1960s, Martin Goodman, was also the publisher for a number of men's adventure magazines: Men, Male and Stag. In these magazines, they had put out a strip called The Adventures of Pussycat drawn by Wally Wood and Bill Ward. These strips were eventually collected, and released as a one-shot magazine in 1968. Inside, it is listed as being printed by Marvel Comics, but there is no Marvel logo on the cover, nor any Comics Code mark. The lack of a Comics Code mark came to be a subtle sign that one might find adult content inside.

Intrigued by Warren's success with their black and white titles, Marvel Comics tried their hand at this field as well releasing Savage Tales starting in 1971, Tomb of Dracula in 1972 and Savage Sword of Conan in 1974. Heavy Metal 's success with glossy color science fiction and fantasy didn't go unnoticed either, and in 1980, Marvel released their Epic Illustrated magazine as well as a number of adult themed graphic novels under the Epic label. By 1986 though, they had cancelled Epic Illustrated, although Savage Sword of Conan continued running until 1995.

In 2001, Marvel Comics decided to withdraw from the Comics Code Authority, and set up their own content rating system, and an adult-oriented Max imprint. In January 2011, DC announced that they were withdrawing from the Comics Code as well, and the sole remaining Authority member Archie Comics withdrew the day after, bringing the code to its end.

Canadian Dave Sim began publishing Cerebus in 1977, and Richard and Wendy Pini put out Elfquest starting in 1978, initially through their own WaRP company. Pacific Comics was formed in 1981, and became the first publisher of Dave Stevens's Rocketeer which was eventually made into a movie. Stevens modeled one of the characters on Bettie Page harkening back to an earlier era of clandestine publishing.

In Japan, comic books (manga) intended for adults are usually divided into Seinen manga (青年漫画 comics for men) and Josei manga (女性漫画 comics for women). Pornographic comics that focus primarily on sex intended for men are usually called seijin-muke manga (成人向け漫画) or eromanga and those intended for women are usually called ladies comics (レーディーズ・コミック) (see also the English term hentai). Seijin-muke manga and ladies comics are usually not carried by family-oriented magazine sellers, and tend to have lower sales figures than men's manga (青年漫画 seinen manga) and women's manga (女性漫画 josei manga) which in turn sell less well than boys comics (少年漫画 shonen manga) and girls comics (少女漫画 shojo manga).

Although most writers and artists of adult comics have been men, there have been a number of women working in the field. As mentioned above, Olivia De Berardinis contributes illustrations to Playboy magazine. Elaine Lee, a writer who has worked for both DC and Marvel, collaborated with artist Michael Kaluta to produce Skin Tight Orbit, a collection of adult short stories published by NBM for their Amerotica label. Wendy Pini has also worked for Marvel, but is perhaps best known for her Elfquest series which she produced with her husband Richard. Amanda Conner was one of the artist who worked on DC/Vertigo's Codename: Knockout. Melinda Gebbie was the artist who worked with Alan Moore on the erotic Lost Girls graphic novel.